


Seven Tuesdays In The Life Of Remus Lupin

by Erised_Rain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:17:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erised_Rain/pseuds/Erised_Rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I messed with Tonks's age and timeline a bit, but nothing too serious.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Seven Tuesdays In The Life Of Remus Lupin

**Author's Note:**

> I messed with Tonks's age and timeline a bit, but nothing too serious.

**\------------ NOVEMBER 1981 **\------------****

Remus likes his tea sweet, two-and-a-half-sugar-spoons sweet, and he usually makes it around 7 am, just when the pipes begin to howl _good-morning_ and his upstairs neighbour starts shouting at his wife. He likes his kitchen, it’s a good kitchen – tiny, with peeling green wallpaper and moth-eaten curtains and a chatty kettle on the stove. It’s the only place in his flat where he can breathe, in and out, in and out, where he can press his palms flat on the cold marble counter, close his eyes and not feel sick between these walls.

Some days he eats warm toast, with butter and marmalade on the corners of his mouth, on the tips of his fingers. Some days his toast is not warm and everything around the toast is dark because he hasn't paid the electricity bill. Some days he doesn’t eat at all. Remus has read that money cannot buy happiness. It is true, he thinks, but it can buy an awful lot. Non-leaking shower for example, warm toast, new pair of socks, newspaper, two and a half spoons of sugar.

Today, on November twenty first, nineteen eighty one, Remus drinks his tea bitter. A draft tickles him with frost-bitten fingers, sneaking in through the holes in his jumper. He has eight muggle coins in his too-big pocket in his too small flat, eight muggle coins which he needs to buy Harry a golden-red rattle in that shop just around the corner. Harry likes the sounds rattles make, his lily-green eyes light up if you move the toy in front of his tiny face.

Shoved in the corner, above his school trunk, which Remus uses as a table these days, there’s a calendar. Summer themed with palm trees hovering in the sea-breeze and some bird in a tiny yellow bikini winking at him. It is torn at the edges, letters and numbers frayed, almost washed-out, sad, but it serves the purpose. It reminds Remus that life does go on, spinning perpetually around him like a well-oiled machine, that today is another day, that the sun is up and he should wash his teeth.

Today is Tuesday again. Remus has lived through, well, thousands and thousands of those so far, trying to run away, to slip between the corners of Mondays and Wednesdays like a thief but it’s a rotten business, fuck it, it doesn’t work, no matter what he does they just keep coming, over and over and over again. Tuesdays are persistent, stubborn, almost as stubborn as one small Gryffindor boy that used to hide Remus’s quills. They won’t stop until one of them knocks the last ragged breath out of his lungs and runs him down into the ground.

 

**\------------ OCTOBER 1974 **\------------****

_“How do you mean ‘impossible’? Earth to Remus – it works! Or were you too busy dropping your jaw to the ground to notice I had a fucking tail?” Sirius is laughing too close to his ear, his voice loud, euphoric, slightly mad._

_It’s Tuesday and they should have been in Transfiguration right now, discussing spells for creating legs on teacups but when Remus tells them this, ears buzzing, voice not quite his own, they just laugh. They’re right, they’re right maybe…what do a stag, a dog, a rat and a werewolf need to know about legs on teacups after all._

_So Remus opts to stare at them, his vision vaguely blurry which could be due to a severe mental illness or at least an intracranial hemorrhage and not actually the fact he has been sitting in a boys dormitory with a god damned Zoo not a moment ago. It makes more sense that way._

_“I think we killed him.” James expresses his concern, waving a hand in front of Remus’s face, dangerously close to his eyes._

_“And your genius attempt to poke his eyes out is definitely a remedy.” Sirius snorts leaning forward to get a closer look and Remus briefly considers reaching out and whacking them upside the heads._

_“Well what do you suggest, genious?”_

_“Fuck if I know. Feed him chocolate? Or raw meat? Kick him in the shins?”_

_“Entirely unhelpful, as usual.” James sighs._

_“S'not what your mother said last night.”_

_“Oy, not my mother, you ungrateful bastard!” James regards him with a look reserved purely for dungbomb-covered Slytherins. “She took you under her roof, she feeds you, washes your socks, puts up with your sick habit of hogging the bathroom and this is how you repay her. Shame on you!”_

_Sirius at least has the decency to look apologetic. He loves Mrs.Potter dearly, she's the closest thing to a mother he has ever had but Sirius’s problem is that most of the time his tongue is quicker than his brain. “Well, at least I eat broccoli when she makes it, I’m not pissy like some people we know.” he coughs significantly._

_“Soooo, Remus, my darling pumpkin.” James continues and grins manically, ignoring Sirius completely. “I’m sure Sirius would be more than happy to hump your leg if you need more assurance.” Sirius raises his hand in a universal one finger salute._

_“Potter’s filthy mouth aside, we’re brilliant!” he nods, eyes bright like a bonfire. ”Brilliant I say!”_

_But before they can get a chance to engage in a three-hour debate about their brilliance Peter sits down on Remus’s bed, next to Remus, and puts his hand on his shoulder. It’s comforting, Remus admits, Peter is sometimes the most reasonable of the boys, sensible and calm in the chaos that are James and Sirius._

_“Remus.” he says, and there is that little movement where he scratches his nose in a grown-up kind of way, like he is thinking about burning political issues. “We did it. It is real, alright. McKinnon can vouch for that. Though I really don’t understand the whole bloody thing with girls and rats. She literally tried to kill me with a broom this morning. Entirely redundant, I think I was already dead when she shrieked.  I’m deaf at the very least. And mind-scarred for life.” And the moment is lost as he gives a mousy laugh. “Y’think I can find new eardrums in Hogsmeade?”_

_Sirius blinks at him. “Where did you run into McKinnon? She’s been in bed for days, bad case of hiccup-boils.”_

_“Yeah, well, er…I might have been testing if the spell on the girls’ staircase worked on animagi.” he mutters, cheeks colored embarrassment-red. “It doesn’t.”_

_The words are followed by a loud wolf- whistle from James and a rather gob-smacked expression on Sirius’s face. Remus would have been surprised too if he didn’t have what seemed to be a pretty serious mental break-down._

_“You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?”  Sirius raises his eyebrow suspiciously._

_“No.” Peters says. “No piss.”_

_Sirius seems to consider this for a moment and then his lips curl up in a smile that looks kind of proud, thinks Remus._

_“My commendation, mate.” he says. “And here I thought your kinks involved only an insatiable lust for food. Which is all good and well, a growing boy, healthy appetite and all that tosh, but a stiffy because of strawberry muffins is not really considered…normal?”_

_“Hey, that was one time!” Peter tries, too embarrassed to come up with a better argument. “And it was because Hestia was telling me how- Wait.” he smirks, positively evil. “ Why were you looking at my manly bits, Sirius?”_

_Sirius rolls his eyes. “Because, Peter, your knob is the stuff of my dreams. I wanna marry it and have its children.”_

_James chooses that exact moment to express his joy regarding this new discovery. “Peter Pettigrew. I could just kiss you now!” he exclaims. “Lads, Lads, lads - imagine the possibilities. Evans. Evans and a night gown, Evans without a night gown, Evans and pillow fights, Evans a-and.”_

_“And before James embarrassingly comes in his pants like an eleven-year-old  and realizes that an overgrown fawn in the middle of a girls dormitory is a terribly bad idea I’d like to get back to the ‘we’re brilliant’ part.” Sirius grins. James satisfies himself by flicking Sirius in the ear._

_“So what do you think, Moony?” he turns to look at Remus over his spectacles. If there’s some sort of appropriate response to this, Remus isn’t aware of what it could be. “We’re a pack now, yeah?.”_

_Remus thinks he should say something now but his jaw won’t move and his tongue feels like it’s been ripped out, cut to small pieces and then put back together upside-down,  all wrong._

_He thinks perhaps he should have been more careful, shouldn’t have spent hours and hours running around the castle, befuddled by this feeling, like for the first time in his life he truly belonged somewhere, looking at James Potter and Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew with wide, grateful eyes over sketches and quills, dungbombs and empty butterbeer bottles, knowing everything about them and having nothing to hide._

_Remus thinks he should have known better than to think that these boys, these three boys who knew he was  a werewolf and decided he was worth keeping around nevertheless, wouldn’t go so far as to perform an illegal spell that could have killed them all and call it ‘brilliant’. His stupid, reckless, wonderful friends,  who are still merely children, climbing trees in Potters back yard, swimming near the summer shores of Brighton, yelling ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ and ‘s not what your mother said’ in voices still too small to break the shadows of their school-boy stubbles, to fill in the sharp corners of their almost-grown up bodies._

_“Moony?” he mutters, slightly nauseated by the mere air._

_“Sorry?”_

_“You called me Moony.”_

_“Yeah,” James laughs. “because of the moon.”_

_Oh. How convenient, Remus thinks madly._

_“Yeah, we have nicknames too.” explains Sirius, teeth flashing white “So. There’s that. Up for a moonlit stroll, mate?” he wiggles an eyebrow “And people say I’m not romantic. Utter rot, eh?”_

_“Sirius.” Remus’s head is about to explode because his friends are bloody animals (literally for once!) he should have been learning about legs on teacups right now and Sirius Black has just suggested a bloody fucking moonlit stroll._

_“Padfoot.”_

_“Huh?” Remus blinks._

_“Padfoot. S’my nickname.”_

_“Padfoot.” says Remus, but he might as well have said ‘insane’. It sounds the same._

_“There, he gets it. McGonagall did say he was the brains of the outfit.” Sirius laughs. “And yet, she keeps blaming me, and James, yes, for everything that’s wrong with this place. Hag.”_

_“Pa..Sirius.”_

_“Lupin.” says  Sirius, voice clear, curling slowly around the‘u’ of Remus’s last name, which always means he’s either about to suggest a rather obscene act involving Remus’s homework and Snape’s hair or that he’s highly amused.  The latter, thinks Remus. “Get that gob-smacked expression off your face and…Merlin, you could work up a little enthusiasm.” he says “Also, once your speech ability returns don’t forget to compliment James’s antlers, he’s gonna get his knickers in a twist if you don’t.” he chuckles._

_“Wanker.” James snorts. “Need I remind you of that twenty-minutes long ode to your oh so silky fur? I had the urge to hit you with a rolled up newspaper. Prat.”_

_“Jamesey, Jamesey, I’d be very nice to me if I were you. Have you seen my teeth? Bloody gigantic, I could eat Wormtail as an entrée and then I’d share you with Moony. I’m sure he loves venison.”_

_That is a very silly thing to say, Remus considers, and this is all screwed up._

_“Oh, is that so?” James makes an amused, sickly-sweet sort of noise. “And you are sure that you’ll have time for that, I mean what with all the balls licking, butt sniffing and dragging your arse over the carpet? Sounds like you’re gonna be awfully busy, mate.” The words get muffled as Sirius throws a pillow at him._

_“Tosser.”_

_“Mutt.”_

_“I’m gonna make you lick your own balls right now.”_

_“Oi, no need to get shirty now. And m’afrad that’s contrary to every existing law of physics.”_

_“Oh yeah? It is a wonder what a human body can do when it’s broken in half.” Sirius grins, launching himself at James and they end up on the floor, a tangled mess of elbows and shins and boyish fists._

_“All right there, Remus?” Peters asks him as Sirius manages to land a spectacular punch between James’s third and fourth rib._

_And Remus doesn’t know quite what to say. “A pack.” he murmurs, fingers gripping at the end of his mattress. James grunts trying to twist away, his knee connecting with Sirius’s thigh._

_Peter looks at him, an odd, lemon-smelling smile on his face. “Yes, we are aren’t we? Bloody brilliant.”_

_“Yeah…” is all he can say, stunned and confused, and then ‘Thank you."_

_“Oh, bollocks, what are friends for.” Peter shrugs, simply, and James socks Sirius in the jaw._

_Later that night, while he lies in his bed, wide-awake, Remus thinks how friendship is a remarkably fertile breeding ground for stupidity and he can’t help but feel selfishly grateful for that.  Sometimes friendship is a remarkably fertile breeding ground for love too and, as Sirius murmurs in his sleep, in a four-poster bed next to his, Remus can’t help but feel wildly terrified._

**\------------ NOVEMBER 1981 **\------------****

Friends tell him a lot of things these days. That he looks tired, sick; they say _‘I'm sorry’_ , they ask him ' _are you eating, come over, do you need company_ ,' in polite, measured voices people use to tell a crying child that their pet turtle is in a better place now. Remus just wants to stab them with the only blunt knife he has, which he keeps in the second cabinet, left to the sink and to tell them to sod off with their sympathetic faces and their Shepherd’s pies. But his muscles cry in protest and he ends up smiling politely. His voice is battered, weak, like he has screamed for a whole year of nineteen eighty one when he spills out a cacophony of ‘ _Thank you, Yes, You shouldn’t have. I don’t. Very kind, but no. I’m alright.”_

They all know, and no one does. Remus’s nerves are all jumbled up like installations in an old Russian solitaire, his friends, all his friends are dead and he loves Sirius Black more than anything in the world, which is ridiculous, mad, pathetic, because Sirius Black is a killer and a traitor and that place between the corner of his lips and the angle of his jaw should taste like poison, sour and black, locked in the dust-heavy corners of his mind.

But it doesn’t, it doesn’t and Remus barely makes it to the bathroom in time to throw up. Bile bites bitter at his throat and he flushes down the remains of Molly’s soup and a coffee he had in Dumbledore’s office today. _‘Don’t be a girl’s blouse Moony, look, you just put your fingers like this, here, and vomit and then we can get back to drinking that whiskey. Surely you don’t want Peter to out-drink you yeah? He’s already taking a piss out of it. ’_ echoes through the pipes, and Remus closes his eyes as the back of his head hits the cold wall and he can feel the exact resonance of Sirius’s  two fingers at the back of his tongue.

 _A man can fall in love a dozen times,_ Remus has read somewhere, _because that is but a temporary condition. But to love someone? That is an entirely different thing_. Pile of Hippogriff shit, that. You can love more than once too, Remus thinks, remembering the muggle boy who used to sell ice-cream in Birmingham and kiss Remus with cold-chocolate lips under an oak tree. But only once in your life you can truly love someone…maddeningly, in a crazy, sick, perfect, terryfying way. Mean and selfish, ugly and beautiful to the very core. He hates that he knows this feeling, he hates the fact he is so _human_ sometimes, he hates the world, this city, Arthur’s jokes, Molly’s jumpers, Dumbledore’s eyes, cars, motorcycles, sun, the smell of leather, the milkman and the neighbour’s cocker-spaniel but most of all he hates himself because, even now, after everything, he can’t hate Sirius Black.

 

**\------------ DECEMBER 1976 **\------------****

_“Moony?” Sirius says, sounding like too little sleep and too much coffee. It’s three hours past midnight and the air in the Gryffindor Common Room is warm, smelling pleasantly like crackling fire and pine needles. They are alone, at the big table in the corner doing their Transfiguration Homework. The absurdity of the situation is obscenely remarkable, Remus thinks, because James and Peter have long since drifted off into their dream worlds, with their essays neatly tucked in their schoolbags and he has spent the whole day stuck in Filch’s closet because Sirius is an unorganized, careless bastard with a poor sense of time._

_“Hm?” asks Remus, looking at the last row of his essay, one neat letter after another, trying to figure out whether ‘paramecium’ is supposed to be spelled with one m or two._

_“You’re not listening.” says Sirius, the tip of his nose smudged with ink._

_One m. Definitely. “No.” Remus replies, scratching his head._

_He doesn’t look but he can hear the frown forming on Sirius’s lips. “Are you mad at me because I forgot you in Filch’s office?”_

_“No. Spending a day hiding in Filch’s closet while he clips his toenails and god knows what else, is one of my many fetishes. Especially if I have a ten page essay due the next day.”_

_“He clipped his toenails?!”_

_“Sirius.”_

_“’M sorry.” Sirius says apologetically, and Remus can only seem to notice another ink smudge just below his jaw. He isn’t angry, he can’t be angry at Sirius Black, god help him. “You can box my ears if that’ll make you feel better.”_

_“Box your ears? What are you, Padfoot, one hundred and eighteen?” Remus chuckles quietly. “Tempting, but I'm 'fraid I’d break your plastic hip.” he adds. “Besides I’m fairly sure that’s illegal these days.”_

_“Is it? Someone should tell that to my mother.” Sirius laughs dryly, running his hand through his hair._

_“Look, it’s alright ,Sirius. Really. Let’s just get this done so we can go to sleep.” he sighs, rubbing his temples, trying to scrub away sleep. “What did you write in conclusion, I can’t seem to figure out what the hell Thaddeus Thurkell has to do with param- Sirius?_

_He blinks and resists the urge to pinch himself. Maybe the lack of sleep has finally caught up with him because Sirius is awfully close, his face is vaguely blurred, and his smile is slightly out of focus, smelling like oranges and too much coffee._

_His gaze flickers from Remus’s lips to his eyes and back down again._

_“Er...Padfoot?” he asks stupidly, wetting his lips. “What are you doing?”_

_Sirius grins, leans across the two essays, and two quills and half-eaten bar of chocolate and curls his fingers into the front of Remus’s school uniform. “Nothin’,” he mumbles, and it tickles because his mouth is against Remus ear._

_“You’ve gone round the bend haven’t you?” asks Remus with a voice higher than usual, slightly hysterical, and his whole body is shaking, so he feels stupid and damn you Sirius, damn you, he thinks idiotically._

_“Must I spell it out for you, Lupin?” says Sirius, sounding as smug and superior as usual as if this is something he does every day, bury his nose in other people’s personal space making their insides perform spectacular back-flips. Wait, he does._

_“Oh no need, no need, ta.” Remus lets out a cynical huff of air. “Because this is perfectly normal. I’ll tell that to the people in St.Mungos Insanity Ward when they come to pick you up, no worri-“_

_“Remus.”_

_“Hm?”_

_“Unbelievable.” Sirius says to himself and Remus has a moment to feel the soft rasp of Sirius’s eyelashes across his cheek before, with a muttered ‘nitwit’, Sirius leans in, all the way, and kisses him full on the mouth._

_When they pull back, Remus’s heart is in his nose, buzzing like a beehive but the sharp edges of Sirius’s cheekbones are bright pink and he looks as lost as Remus feels, so somehow all is right with the world._

_“Fuck.” Sirius mutters, wide-eyed._

_Remus can only agree. “Why-“ he asks._

_Sirius shrugs. “It’s Tuesday and I’ve been thinking about this for almost a year.” His hand is freezing and restless as it touches Remus’s jaw. Nervousness feels strange when it’s on the tips of Sirus’s fingers._

_“Ah, I see.” Remus nods. “Well, then, alright I guess, since. Since it’s Tuesday. But this will, you know, everything-”_

_“Yeah.” whispers Sirius. “But we can sit here now and discuss all the ways in which this can screw up our friendship; hell, you can even make one of those pretty little lists of yours or we can-”_

_“Or.” Remus says quickly. “Definitely or.”_

_Sirius grins, bright like a sunrise, and a simple tug at Remus’s shirt collar makes his head dizzy and his throat dry so he closes his eyes and lets himself be kissed by Sirius Black’s sixteen-year-old lips._

**\------------ DECEMBER 1981 **\------------****

He takes a walk through London’s Hyde park sometimes, when the sky is heavy, rain-pregnant and the corners of his flat are closing around him. Sometimes the couples that sit on the park benches are too loud, the smiling children jumping into water puddles too annoying. But sometimes he sees a boy, just an ordinary boy, clutching firmly his mother’s gentle hand and he thinks ‘it could have been like this’. He thinks of Lily, good, wonderful Lily who had a sharp tongue, warm smiles and enough love for everyone. He sees a father, explaining to his child the proper way to fly a kite, a little impatiently like all young fathers tend to do, and he thinks of James, arrogant, loud, brilliant James.

It’s the world on a platter here, life rushing like a high-speed train, except it’s all wrong, that’s not them and those chubby boys running around, almost knocking Remus over, are going to grow up into not-so-chubby young men but none of them is going to have a mousy laughter and a nickname that rhymes with ‘Meat’, none of them is going to spend a day stuck in the secret tunnel left to the Charms classroom, because James, that plonker, forgot to mention it was a bit narrow. 

And everywhere else he looks, everything else he sees- a dog, a tree, a bridge, an ice-cream van - everything else reminds him of Sirius Black.

 

**\------------ SEPTEMBER1978 **\------------****

_It’s September in London today and Remus is lying down, tucked in the curve of the couch, his eyelashes heavy, sleepy, almost, almost shutting down - “Park! Yes, that’s it! Park.” Sirius whines in his ear which echoes through Remus’s brain-stem like a bloody Sonorous charm. This, thinks Remus, would be a very reasonable, Sirius-like request if it wasn’t a wee hour and they didn't have liters of cheap-muggle vodka in their blood and Merlin, he just wants to sleep. “Come on, Remus, get up! I’m bored.”_

_“Boo-hoo.” Remus says, untouched, covering his face with a pillow. One of the most lethal things in the universe is a sloshed, hyperactive Sirius when he sets his mind on something. “Find someone else to bother, my impending hangover and I would appreciate it very much.”_

_“But you promised.”_

_“A bottle of vodka ago.”_

_“But you promised._

_“And you got me drunk. Now suffer.”_

_“But Moooony.”_

_“No.”_

_“Y’know what they say – persistence beats resistance.” Sirius declares, tugging insistently at Remus’s sleeve. “Moony, Moony,Mooony, Moooony.”_

_Dealing with Sirius sometimes is worse than dealing with a five year old (which is hell and Remus knows this because he has worked as a preschool teacher briefly last year.)_

_“’They do say a lot of shite these days.”  Remus’s yawn is muffled by the pillow._

_“Well, it worked for James.” Sirius points out._

_“Bully for him. Now please stop destroying my only good jumper.”_

_“Moony?”_

_“What?” Remus half expects a lap-full of an enthusiastic dog and his manly bits smashed to smithereens._

_“How badly do you wanna sleep?” Sirius’s voice is quieter now, somewhere near the inside of Remus’s elbow._

_“Badly.” he murmurs._

_There’s a silence for a short moment where Remus allows a small smile to curl the corners of his lips. One of the most lethal things in the universe might be a hyperactive Sirius but he’s learned that some things are more powerful than that._

_“Next Tuesday then?” asks Sirius and there is a sound of footsteps across the wooden floor and after a second a soft touch of wool as Sirius throws a blanket over him._

_“Next Tuesday.” Remus promises._

_“Night Moony.”_

_“G'night.”_

_“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Sirius smirks, pressing a quick kiss to Remus’s neck (his face is still covered with a pillow!), teeth barely scraping the warm skin._

_“Barmy.” Remus murmurs affectionately, eyelashes fluttering shut. The last thing he hears is Sirius shuffling to the bathroom ‘to take a piss’  and that is where Remus will find him tomorrow, sound asleep in the bathtub with toothpaste and a cabbage leaf in his hair (which poor unsuspecting James will eat in his sandwich when he drops by for a cup of morning coffe)_

**\------------ DECEMBER 1981 **\------------****

Some nights Remus dreams, tossing and turning in his sheets. When he wakes up it’s with cold sweat curling the edges of his hair, and with a sickening feeling of being torn between arousal and the urge to rip himself apart. He gets up from the bed, takes a cold shower, makes himself a mug of hot tea and tries not to remember. Sometimes this works. Most of the time it doesn’t.

It was a funny game they played, a game in which they kissed with morning-lazy lips, drank tea and ate flummery pudding with one spoon from chipped, ceramic bowls, or off each other. A game in which they shared twenty eight different types of ‘special looks’ over Lily’s dinner, over poker cards and dirty ashtrays when James and Peter weren’t looking; a game in which they were ‘just friends’ in the eyes of the whole world, but something, something else between the four walls of their tiny flats where they fucked on the couch, in the shower, on the floor, over the table and where no one spoke of Important Things out loud. The unspoken rule was simple - the first one who says those three little words loses. And in the end neither of them lost but both came out defeated.

Remus could tell you the exact moment when he thought about saying it. Tuesday, Frank and Alice’s wedding. They were nineteen, bright-eyed and alive, off-their heads drunk as they Apparated to Sirius's flat and ended up sprawled on the floor, Sirius’s elbow digging panfully into Remus’s stomach, Remus’s shin knocking over a box of half-cold Chinese Sirius had left on the floor earlier that day. They fucked right there, with Sirius’s elbow digging painfully into Remus’s stomach and Remus’s shin smeared with leftovers of half-cold rice Sirius licked clean after that.

“Think you could get your elbow out of my liver,” Remus moaned when Sirius trapped his lower lip between his teeth. “so, ah- so we can move this to the couch?”

“No.” Sirius gasped into his mouth, hips grinding down, and Remus was so turned on, light-headed, that he just let his head thud back against the cold floor.

They kissed, messily, uncoordinated, Sirius was taller than him and the muscles of his arms were trembling as he peeled the clothes off Remus, the shirt, the tie, the suit with a wedding cake stain on the sleeve. Remus’s body screamed claustrophobically through every space where his skin was pressed against Sirius and when his shaky hands managed to unzip Sirius’s trousers and pull them off Sirius groaned, tilting his head to the side, the pale, damp curve of his throat exposed, ready for Remus’s teeth.

So Remus bit him, possessively, making a mark, reveling in the sounds Sirius made, champagne-sweet, electric, against his shoulder. He pressed one firm, sweaty palm to Sirius’s bare back and tugged him closer.

The words Sirius spilled in the shadows above his collarbone were hot, scorching, his body slick, heavy, pressing down, and Remus’s body slick, eager, pressing up, as he buried Sirius’s name behind his ear and his fingers in the mess of black hair.

That night, gasping for air, he thought _I’m losing it_ , with his body splayed open for Sirius Black, Sirius’s two wet fingers inside him, he thought ‘ _No, I’ve already lost it, and you know it don’t you.”_

**\------------ FEBRUARY 1979 **\------------****

_“God. Remus.” Sirius whispers, spent and heavy against his lips. Remus is acutely aware of the hot wetness smeared between them, and hot wetness inside of him and his thighs are still tight around Sirius hips, quivering. He inhales, exhales, the simple mechanics of breathing almost forgotten in the space, which is not space at all, between their bodies._

_“Gerrof, mutt, I can’t feel my legs.” he mumbles and feels like laughing._

_“That’s rather the point innit?” Sirius says, but he slips out of him, shifts to one side, left leg hooked over Remus’s thigh, and tucks his chin in the crook of Remus’s neck. “I am so fucking good that you’ll be walking sideways for months.”_

_“Somene will be in celibate for months, more likely. And that someone is not going to be me.” sighs Remus into his hair._

_“Empty threats, empty threats.”_

_Remus snorts. “Yeah? I’ll have you know I had offers today.”_

_“Frank’s grandmother doesn’t count.” There’s that infuriating smirk of his, Remus can feel it sliding against his collarbone. “She has false teeth and _arthritis_ and all kinds of old people disease. Also she smells like turnip.”_

_“Maybe, but I’m sure she could last longer than you.”_

_“Ouch.” he laughs as Sirius’s sharp canines close playfully around his collarbone._

_“Lupin, Lupin.” Sirius scolds him, which Remus finds perversely attractive. ”You’re hurting my feelings.”_

_“Like fuck I am. Your feelings were perfectly fine while they were grinding against Alice’s bridesmaids.”_

_He is not jealous. He’s not. They’re not a couple, they’re not boyfriends, silly, and Sirius isn’t his so he has no right to say that. But…_

_“Been ogling me haven’t you? I was just being nice.” Sirius laughs, his head raised slightly so he can press a kiss to the dimple on Remus’s chin._

_“Nice? Well, that’s a novelty.” Remus notices. “Smarmy git.”_

_“Ha-ha. Funny werewolf.” Sirius licks the tip of his nose. “Anyway those birds don’t have the qualities I’m looking for.”_

_“A cock?”_

_“Remus! Proper fucking prefect, my arse. ” grins Sirius._

_“What can I tell you, I have fallen in with the wrong crowd...Rotten, really.” He chuckles, summer-rain soft, smoothing his palm over the hairs at Sirius’s nape._

_“Rotten, is it?”_

_“Mhm. As a decaying kneazle.”_

_“A decaying kneazle? That’s the best you've got?”_

_“No, but I’d rather not think right now.”_

_“Hah, that’s a shocker.” Sirius laughs lazily._

_They’re silent for a while. The shadows make their clothes, crumpled on the floor, look like dark silhouettes of the things Remus sometimes thinks about. Everything around him is wet and sticky, the fire is slowly dying in the fireplace and the floorboards are digging painfully into his back, but Remus wouldn’t move for the world. He is close to dozing off when Sirius speaks again._

_“Wanna know why?” he says, low rumble of words against Remus’s throat, the whuff of exhaled air on his skin. It takes Remus a minute to connect the dots and realize what he’s talking about. “They hate tea and they don’t snore.” Sirius shifts on top of Remus again, grinning. “No deviated septum, you see.”_

_“Oh, is that so?” says Remus, running his hands up the inside of Sirius’s thighs, feather-light. “A disturbing variety of your kinks never ceases to amaze me. ”_

_“Werewolves with deviated septum make me happy in my pants.”  shrugs Sirius. ”Sue me.”_

_Remus laughs, something warm bubbling in his chest, somewhere between his left lung and his right ventricle maybe. ”And they don’t drink tea you say.” he considers “Savages.”_

_“Mhm. Utterly barbaric.” Sirius hums and leans down, licking a wet path down Remus’s jaw, his neck, his Adam’s apple, his chest bone, pressing his lips to the place where his heart lies in its rib cage. A low growl escapes Remus’s throat, hand reaching to run up and down Sirius’s back until it finally rests between his shoulder blades. He can feel shudder and shift of Sirius’s spine beneath his palm, vertebrae seven, eight and nine leaning into his touch. And Merlin, he is so barely shaking above Remus, his fingers digging almost desperately into the soft flesh of Remus’s hips._

_Remus knows that if he moves his hand down, a little to the left, following the gentle curve of Sirius’s ribs to that place above his hip bone, Sirius will moan. He knows that if he nips at Sirius’s earlobe or kisses his shoulder Sirius will gasp and swear and mutter something vaguely coherent which will make Remus laugh. But right now, he doesn’t want to laugh. The pool of heat is gathering low in his belly, again, but it’s nothing compared to the liquid warmth of his thudding heart. He shudders, biting his own lip._

_When did this stop being just sex, just a school-boy crush, Remus wonders. Was it ever just that?_

_When he lifts his head up, barely, and looks down he sees that Sirius’s breathless grin has faded away and he’s looking at Remus, pupils blown wide, smiling, only just, like that, so maybe, maybe he’s feeling it too. He makes a sound, soft, barely audible, and sucks Remus’s left nipple into his mouth, working it with his teeth and tongue until Remus squirms beneath him._

_“None of them,” Sirius is speaking again, breath coming out in shudders, as he moves his tongue further down to lick the sticky, cold mess from Remus’s belly, “make that noise like a suffocated puffskein when eating chocolate cake. “_

_Oh, thinks Remus. That’s, that’s my- me, on your tongue, in your mouth._

_Sirius laughs nervously, he’s never done this before, Remus realizes - it’s not like Sirius hasn’t sucked him off before, he has, countless times, but he always finishes the job with his hand,  he’s never tasted how-, he never swallows, never, and now his tongue has, he’s- oh, god. “And if I did this, right here, like this” he mouths at the silver-scar on the inside of Remus’s thigh and, fuck, Remus thrusts, his now painfully-hard cock sliding shamelessly against Sirius’s cheek “they sure as hell wouldn’t do that.” he grins, victoriously, his voice absolutely filthy._

_“Sirius!” Remus gasps, heat messing with his brain, Sirius Black messing with his brain, bastard, bloody fucking bastard and to hell with everything, he thinks madly._

_“Mmm?”_

_“I-“_

_“Shh, Moony. People generally don’t talk when I’m about to give them a mind-shattering blow-job.” Sirius hums, mouth dragging along the pulsating veins on Remus's cock, slowly, deliberately, distractingly._

_“But I-“_

_“Shh I said.” Sirius says, lips touching the tip of his cock, obscenely hot, sticky, promising. He licks the head, once, twice, swirls his tongue over the slit and Remus cries out softly. He tries to thrust again but Sirius has one hand on his belly, the other on  his hip, pinning  Remus to the floor. He presses a wet kiss to the base of his cock and Remus sucks in a breath._

_”I want-” Sirius says, panting, suddenly desperate rise and fall of his chest making the muscles in Remus’s thighs tremble. “Wanna taste you when, when you-. Down my throat.” he manages and Remus’s eyeballs almost roll back into his skull, he almost comes right there, all over Sirius’s face._

_“Fuck, Sirius! Ah, Jesus Christ. Fuck!” he hisses,  fingers curling tightly in Sirius’s hair. Oh, he’s good, the bastard’s good. But Remus Lupin isn’t thirteen years old and he’s not going to lose it just because Sirius Black has his mouth on his cock and is whispering filthy things to him._

_“I still. Still haven’t. The thing I.”_

_“Don’t.” Sirius says. “Whatever it is don’t.”_

_Why not, Remus wants to scream. “What if I want?”_

“ _You’re drunk.”_

_“Not really. And neither are you.”_

_“Fuck, I can’t talk about this now.” Sirius’s grip on his hips tightens. “Another time. Later. There is time, you know. Plenty.”_

_“Maybe there isn’t.” Maybe I want to lose this game, now? The words are more terrifying now when they’re at the tip of his tongue. Remus realizes he is absolutely petrified and he can feel the tremors in the end of his fingertips, still buried in Sirius’s hair which is somewhere between his thighs. It’s Sirius and this…this thing, Remus realizes, it’s Sirius and what he can do to him. You’re exactly what I’m frightened of aren’t you? he looks at him through heavy-lidded eyes. And I’m your boggart too. Is that it? Is that it?_

_“Fucking drama queen.” Sirius hisses._

_“You don’t have to, say it, I mean. If you don’t-” says Remus._

_“No, I do. I think, I. Shit, I know alright? I know. “ Sirius mumbles, almost incoherently and then “Now shut up.” as he closes his mouth over Remus’s cock, slick heat surrounding him, and Remus loses all capability of rational thought._

**\------------ DECEMBER 1981 **\------------****

He falls apart on the thirty first of December in the stone basement of his childhood home. The change is quick this time, violent, and his insides writhe and rage disjointedly as the golden moon rips the sky open.

The wolf mourns differently. It doesn’t understand loss the way humans do, its pain is brutal and raw, uncontrolled just like the ancient magic in its blood. It wants to hurt and bite and howl and kill and scream and destroy. It wants to rip apart, itself or Remus or a tree or a rabbit or that thing, in a cold-stone cell way over the sea, that smells like salt and black and _mine_ , it doesn’t matter.

When Remus wakes up, he wakes up alone, for the first time in years. His face is hot and wet against the cold floor, body turned inside-out, blood still humming wildly through his system. He breathes in. And out. His human heart restarts and he can feel a pulse in his fingers, life. The smell of salt and Sirus’s hair, thick in his nose, still scraping at his insides, makes him wish he was dead.

But he isn’t and there are things to do, errands to run, still-rumpled sheets that need to be washed and there’s a  box of cold spaghetti in the fridge and a tap that doesn’t work anymore.

**\------------ MARCH 1980 **\------------****

_“Fucking hell. Remus, is that you? I told you to call that bummer guy weeks ago.” A sound of Sirius’s fury and glass shattering in the kitchen greet Remus as he opens the front door._

_“I  don't see why we can't use bloody magic, I mean what’s the point of suffering through seven years of education when I can’t even fix a god damned tap! Constant fucking vigilance, fucking Alastor, I’ll shove him constant vigilance somewhere really unpleasant. Fuck!”_

_Remus doesn’t want to have this discussion now, not when he hasn’t been home for three days and there’s an angry scarlet scratch pulsating painfully all the way from his thigh to his ankle._

_“Plumber, Sirius.” Hullo to you too. “And I did. He said he’ll send someone over on Friday. Today’s Tuesday.” I missed you terribly._

_“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Sirius hisses. “Bloody muggles. I’m sick and tired of having to pretend I’m one of them. Fuck caution.”_

_Remus tries not to limp as he walks into the kitchen, tries to cover the teeth marks on his wrist but Sirius’s eyes are already there, storm-grey and piercing. There are dark circles around them, worry etched deep into once smooth skin of his forehead and he’s pale like he hasn’t slept for weeks...twenty two days to be exact, Remus knows._

_“Had fun?” he asks darkly and then turns his back to Remus, shoulders tensing up._

_Remus wants to hex him right there, with something really painful, he wants to smack him across the head, to grab him by his stupid coal-black hair and slam a fist so hard n his nose so that it bleeds for days, he wants to grab him by the face with both hands and shake him soundly, hug him, fuck him, kiss him, scream at him ‘you’re stupid. fucking stupid. don’t do this. don’t.’_

_“Where have you been?” Sirius asks._

_“Sirius, we’ve been through this before. You know I can’t.”_

_“Yeah right.” Sirius snorts and grabs his jacket from its place on the hanger. “Well, I’m off. Already running late.”_

_“Where?” Remus asks spitefully, childishly, his own voice sounding way too distant._

_“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Moony my friend.” he laughs coldly, sharp around the edges. “We wouldn’t want to piss off Dumbledore now would we?”_

_Remus doesn’t say anything._

_“Right. Bye then. Oh, and you should do something about that limping. You look like shit enough as it is.” he says, slamming the door._

_Remus doesn’t say anything._

 

**\------------ JUNE1986 **\------------****

He can tell she likes him, she looks at him over the table full of Molly’s pies the way James Potter used to look at Lily Evans in Charms, a life-time ago. Just a child, Remus thinks, that will drink in every word of his, easily, recklessly. So he tells her No, over and over and over again. He tells her he’s no good, that he’s too poor, too old, too dangerous, too broken. But Nymphadora doesn’t listen, she has that infuriating, child-like stubbornness that speaks a lot about the fact that blood isn’t water after all.

****

**\------------ AUGUST 1979 **\------------****

_At the end of the summer of nineteen seventy nine, Remus loses another job, fifth one this year. A bruised elbow, a broken leg and a bleeding lip after the full moon were enough for his boss (Shitfuck as Sirius called him) to slam the door in his face without a second thought._

_“So what are we?” Sirius murmurs to the crook of Remus's neck. They’re on the couch in Sirius’s flat, Remus curled up against the arm, his healing leg stretched out, and Sirius, shirtless with his sweatpants riding low on his hips, curled up against him._

_“Caned?” Remus suggests, exhales, watching how the thick smoke spills and tumbles from his lips. He passes the joint to Sirius who laughs, a soft rumble against Remus’s skin._

_“No, I mean, we. You and I. Now.”_

_Remus thinks for a moment, which is rather difficult what with all the colors in his head. “Well, I’m an ‘unreliable employee and a deeply troubled young man that surely does drugs and gets into a lot of street fights. Bad example for today’s youth’ and you’re just a lazy prick with nothing better to do than waste your money on alcohol and said drugs.”_

_“I could do you.” smiles Sirius, knuckles pressed to Remus’s thighs._

_Remus rolls his eyes. “Original.”_

_“I’m good at that. And there’s no one I’d rather do.”_

_“Are you trying to get into my pants, Sirius Black? Because you’ve been there an hour ago and, if I recall correctly, you didn’t have to say a word.” Remus grins, eyelashes heavy._

_“Wanker.” Sirius huffs, one finger curling lazily into Remus’s belt-loop. “I’m trying to be romantic.”_

_“Oh? Romantic. Do carry on then.”_

_“So I think I won’t shag anyone else, ever again. I don’t want to, you know. Only you. ”_

_Remus snorts playfully. ”Oh gods, how flattered I feel. Indescribable.”_

_“If you insist on being a sarcastic bastard I might reconsider that.” Sirius threatens through smoke-thick air and passes the joint to Remus._

_“Tragedy.” says Remus, inhaling._

_“And well, I think you should move in with me.”_

_Oh._

_Well._

_Remus closes his eyes, breathing still._

_“As romantic as that sounds I have my own place, Sirius.” he says carefully. This is a dangerous territory now, they’re playing the game again and it’s unfair because Remus’s head is buzzing and Sirius has his fingers on his zipper._

_“That has vermin breeding under the bed. Which you can’t pay for since you got sacked.”_

_“I’ll find another job.”_

_Sirius snorts. “And get sacked again.”_

_Well, Remus can’t argue with that, being a werewolf is a bloody nightmare in both worlds, wizarding and muggle alike._

_“Stop being a stubborn arsehole will you? You’re here more than at your own place anyway. You wouldn’t have to worry about the money and I wouldn’t have to worry about dirty laundry yeah? It’s a win-win solution. And anyway, things are working out, this is just-”_

_“Sirius.”_

_“Remus, please.” he shifts and resettles so that now he’s looking Remus straight in the eyes. “I want you here alright? It gets, you know, lonely when you’re not-…I mean, the bed makes a funny noise, there’s always too much food, James doesn’t like watching muggle telly and I have a gigantic stash of that crap you like – Mrs. Purplesoup’s Noodles was it, nasty stuff but I know it’s the only god-damned thing you eat after the full and besides, it was on sale it’s not like I…fuck – I just…need to have you here, close, something, well...that, yes. So there.”_

_A shiver is running down Remus’s spine and the air is suddenly so thick that he can’t breathe. He glances at the way Sirius’s head is slightly tilted, his cheekbones colored soft-pink, his too long fringe is getting tangled into his eyelashes every time he blinks and Merlin, he is looking at him with more trepidation than Remus has ever seen in those grey eyes. It makes Remus absolutely light-headed._

_“I don’t wanna shag anyone else either.” he says finally. “Ever again.”_

_The grin Sirius flashes him is wide as a sun. “Good. It’s settled then.”_

_“Except maybe that bloke in the bookstore -“_

_Sirius pinches his arm. “Shut your fucking mouth and come here.” he plucks the dead joint from Remus’s hand and tosses it somewhere behind him before gently straddling his hips, thumb sliding along Remus’s mouth, coaxing his lips apart._

_“Hey, careful with the invalid.” Remus murmurs, tongue touching Sirius’s thumb. It tastes like ash and smoke._

_“Hmpf.” says Sirius, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t mind it an hour ago, did you?”_

_“Incorrigible.” Remus whispers but he curls his fingers in Sirius’s hair and tugs him closer._

_“So what are we now?” he asks against Sirius’s lips. He can’t tell anymore._

_“Getting up to no good, I hope. And tomorrow I’m gonna make you pancakes and we’re gonna move your things here.”_

_“Tomorrow’s Wednesday. I guess I could stay for a few days, maybe until next Tuesday, I’ll find something in the meantime.”_

_“Oh please, bollocks. You’re staying for good.” Sirius says, licking that place behind Remus’s ear which makes a strangled “No.” from Remus a pretty good answer, considering the circumstances._

_“For good. Forever. Whatever you wanna call it.”_

_“My, my Padfoot, are you getting sentimental?” One small, peculiar smile is tugging at the corner of Remus’s lips._

_Sirius laughs. “Well, fuck me! I sound like a bloody nance don’t I? Jesus Christ. It must be the drugs.”_

_“Mhm, it must be that.” Remus says, and kisses his lips. “Now, mmm, what was that you said?”_

_“Nance?”_

_“Before that.”_

_“Oh.” Sirius grins devilishly. “Fuck me, Moony.”_

_And Remus does just that._

**\------------ APRIL 1987 **\------------****

_‘It would be good for you to have someone_ , _Remus dear’,_ Molly says to him with flour all over her apron and that infuriating know-it-all look she has perfected over the years of mothering seven children. ‘ _To take care of you, that you can take care of too.’_

Remus thinks she might be right and Nymphadora has warm hands and smiles just for him and when he kisses her on one Tuesday in April, next to the Weasley’s flying car, she makes a noise that sounds nothing like low, encouraging growls he knew so well. Her lips taste of bubblegum, she giggles when they break apart, and her fingers tangled in his hair feel all wrong, out of place. But she’s _someone_ and Remus likes the way she eats her soup, the way she laughs like an Erumpent with a cold, and she kisses him on the nose, hair turning bright pink, before Apparating.

Remus stays a bit longer, showing Fred and George how to transform garden gnomes into exploding  fountains (which he stops doing as soon as he sees a disapproving, highly dangerous flash in Molly's eyes). He shakes hands with Arthur, thanks Molly for the dinner and Apparates. Perhaps he could try living for a change, he thinks as his insides flip and twist in a swirl of colors, if he still remembers how to do that.

April sun is burning his eyelids as he stumbles into the kitchen. Remus likes his kitchen, it’s a good kitchen – tiny, with peeling green wallpaper and moth-eaten curtains and a chatty kettle on the stove. I’m gonna do those over. Brown, he thinks. He likes brown. Perhaps it’s time? Perhaps he could?

 _It doesn’t do to live with ghosts, my dear boy_ – Dubmledore said it a few days ago, looking at twenty-six year old Remus over his half-moon spectacles, and if Dumbledore said it that must be true, it must be.

It doesn’t do, Remus repeats to himself, thinking about smoke-grey, heavy-lidded eyes and that winter in Oxford. How they hid under the old stone bridge, empty paper cups and persistent-still-autumn leaves crushed under their hips and their fingers, and Sirius’s nose was cold, winter-red, and Remus remembers how the back of his ear tasted like crisp snow when he panted against it.

 _Once burned, twice shy_ , isn’t that what people say? They also say that everyone gets a second chance, so surely there is one just for Remus Lupin, the werewolf, out there? This time he’ll do different, this time he’ll do better, this time he knows.

 “I love you.” he says to the empty kitchen, testing the words on his tongue. They feel heavy, tired, dusty and eroding at the back of his throat. “There. You stupid, stupid, bastard. I love you.”

 _Loveyou,loveyou_ , the pipes in the sink mock him in Black, metal voices. The car horns outside are restless, the milkman’s van is parked on the street, cocker spaniel next door is barking and his upstairs neighbour is shouting again.

Dumbledore was right, he thinks, this doesn’t do, things are merely what they are, people are what they’re born to be and _forever_ , after all, is just a word. Remus presses his palms flat on the cold marble counter and breathes.

“There.” he closes his eyes, London spring sinking between the lines and wrinkles of his face. “Game over. Will you let me live now?”


End file.
